Whiting: Oldest Peace Corps volunteer nearly arrested

When do life's grand adventures end? If you're like John LaPlante, now 84, they don't.

When LaPlante was a lad of 80, he was told he was the eldest of 8,000 Peace Corps volunteers.

When I heard that, I was stunned. Like a lot of us, as a kid I dreamed of joining the Peace Corps – or the Green Beret. But service toward the other end of the rainbow?

LaPlante laughs when I tell him my boyhood dreams. He reports the Peace Corps isn't all fun. A Newport Beach resident, he was assigned to the Ukraine. There were times when it was cold, difficult and scary.

What was the toughest day?

His toughest day was at night. He went home in a police car.

• • •

LaPlante is a man with many lives. But one of them wasn't military.

In his 70s, he looked around for a new adventure, and it had always bothered him he'd never been in the service.

A wee bit over the hill for the Marines, LaPlante decided he'd join the Peace Corps. He explains his service was out of patriotism and "doing good for the good of it."

The only problem was that his partner, Annabelle Williams, couldn't join him because of health issues. Would she mind if he disappeared...for 27 months?

"Jeepers creepers," LaPlante says – a phrase he uses a lot – Williams gave her blessing.

LaPlante was thrilled. Fluent in French, he looked forward to living in an area that France once colonized and where the people still spoke French.

Southeast Asia? West Africa?

The Peace Corps had other ideas. Wanting to be sure their oldest volunteer was near good medical care, LaPlante landed in Chernihiv, a city of 300,000 in northern Ukraine – and closer to Chernobyl than LaPlante would have liked.

The first thing LaPlante struggled with was learning Russian. He reports learning a new language in your 70s is darned difficult. "I nearly flunked," he admits. "I thought they were going to kick me out."

Instead, LaPlante persevered while some other volunteers quit. He became a professor of English studies, teaching courses during the day as well as at night.

The second thing he struggled with was the weather. Used to splitting his years between Connecticut in summer and Newport Beach in winter, LaPlante wasn't used to making his way around in ice and snow. The average low in January was 16 degrees.

"When the first snow fell, I stared out the window and thought, 'How can I possibly survive this?'"

Still, he relished his new life because of the warmth of the people.

• • •

After he got used to living in a new culture with different food, customs, even transportation – mostly trolleys – LaPlante flourished.

The Peace Corps gave him an allowance of $200 a month. It may sound like a pittance considering it was supposed to cover room and board. But this was the Ukraine where annual income averages around $1,800.

He moved in with a family that helped him learn to navigate the city. Along with his work at a local university, organizing a Sunday English club and helping digitize a library, he started mentoring a 14-year-old boy.

In some ways, LaPlante was paying forward what he'd learned during 16 years of Catholic education. Growing up in Rhode Island and then Worcester, Mass. – or as LaPlante pronounces it "Woosta" – he was taught first by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart and then by priests at Assumption College, where he later worked in public relations.

With the Ukrainian boy, LaPlante taught English. But he is most proud that he managed to instill an appreciation of reading – something LaPlante has kept since getting his first library card as a boy.

"I was 12, maybe 13 years old and I went to the Pawtucket library. I walked up the marble steps, opened the bronze doors and I got that card.

"I love to read," LaPlante confesses. He also loves to write.

• • •

As we chat, LaPlante jumps up and rushes into a back room. He returns carrying several books he's written. One is called "Around the World at 75: Alone, Dammit!" The title says it all.

His trip was a 75th birthday present to himself.

LaPlante, who started his professional life as a reporter and launched and went bankrupt running a weekly newspaper, jokes, "My books are among the worst selling books in the world."

Another book on the table is about his journey with the Peace Corps. At 546 pages it's longer than his going-around-the-world book, but not by much. In it, he details how to navigate the Peace Corps, especially for older volunteers. He also shares his experiences teaching the Ukrainian boy, Anton.

"We'd sit side by side at a table and talk," LaPlante writes. "He's was interested in a whole range of subjects, and I would latch onto one and use it as teaching bait."

LaPlante's eyes grow wide behind his spectacles describing their bond. "If he'd been an orphan, I would have adopted him."

But LaPlante darkens when he describes the night he wound up nearly being arrested.

• • •

It was winter, about 9 p.m. and LaPlante had just left a night class. The wind cut through his clothes as he waited at an outside trolley station.

Two men and a woman were standing nearby drinking from bottles. Soon, they started arguing over sharing the last of the beer. The arguing escalated and – on purpose or by accident – someone crashed into LaPlante. He toppled off the sidewalk and onto the road.

As he lay dazed on icy concrete, a police car pulled up. The officers demanded he explain himself. Struggling with understanding LaPlante's poor Russian, the police figured LaPlante for a drunk.

LaPlant explains, "Drunkenness is a big problem in the Ukraine."

Finally, LaPlante was able to pull out a piece of paper that explained what he was doing in the Ukraine and where he lived. The police hustled him into their car and eventually agreed to drive him home, battered, bruised but undeterred.

Still, LaPlante faced one more culture shock – returning to the U.S. The strangest thing coming home? The sky-high price of gasoline.

• • •

As we wind down, I ask LaPlante about his next great adventure. He grins.

"I have one lined up."

In a few months, LaPlante will drive across America in a converted van so he can eat and sleep without wasting money on silly things like motel bills and restaurants. He plans to soak in the nation at about 150 miles a day.

He invited Williams along. But she just smiled and said, "Bon voyage."